UGANDA JOURNAL.


Tibbetts, known as "Bones," a Colonial Officer of quite a different type. Bones
certainly had strength of character, but silence was not one of his strong points.
If the average speech of Sanders occupies about three lines, and that of Hamil-
ton, except when sparring with Bones, five, that of Bones occupies at least
twenty. The idiosyncrasies of Bones are in fact pure padding, but they ensured
the continued success of the Sanders series. It has been observed with some
truth (4) that they have made Sanders a best seller for a quarter of a century,
for the same reason that P.G. Wodehouse has been a best seller during the same
period. For Bones, though utterly different in many respects, certainly has much
in common with Bertie Wooster and other congenital idiots in monocles and
old school ties that Wodehouse fans never tire of. Incidentally there are points
of resemblance between Bosambo and the imperturbable and indispensable Jeeves.
 III. The man Sanders.
 The Christian name of Mr. Commissioner Sanders is never revealed to us,
though certainly it began with an H; nor do we ever hear anything of his re-
lations. But we do know that by religion he was a Wesleyan, and that his early
education had included the study of Latin. We are also told a little of his per-
sonal history before he came to the West Coast, when we may assume that he
was somewhere about 30 years of age. By that time he had had considerable
African experience. Here are the words of Wallace himself:-
 "Mr. Commissioner Sanders had graduated to West Central Africa by such
 easy stages that he did not realize when his acquaintance with the back
 lands began. Long before he was called on by the British Government to
 keep a watchful eye upon some quarter of a million cannibal folk, who ten
 years before had regarded white men as we regard the unicorn, he had met
 the Basuto, the Zulu, the Fingo, the Pondo, the Matabele, Mashona, Barotse,
 Hottentot and Bechuana. Then curiosity and interest took him westward
 and northward and he met the Angola folk; then northward to the Congo,
 eastward to the Masai, and finally by way of the Pigmy people, he came
 to his own land."
 In another place it is stated that as a young man he had assisted in the war
which broke Lobengula. This was in 1892. Also there was a time when he was
only Assistant Commissioner.
 We may infer that the period of his Commissionership began in the early
 years of King Edward VII's reign, when Joseph Chamberlain was Colonial Secret-
 ary, and that he retired immediately after the end of the Great War. We are at
 any rate definitely informed that he was dug out of his retirement, shortly after
 this, in order to take charge for a short time of the country of the "Old King", on
 the borders of his old Territory, mandated to the British Empire by the Peace
 Treaties, and that even after this he had thoughts of taking on a commercial job
 on the West Coast, though in the end he was dissuaded from so doing.
 His pay as Commissioner was 2 a day, and in view of his frequent safaris
up and down the river, he must have drawn a handsome amount in travelling
allowances.


(4) By Margaret Lane.